Amazon Loop
Summary
I recently navigated a multi-round interview process for Amazon, which involved initial delays and numerous reschedulings. I faced challenging Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA) problems, some of which were quite unusual, along with standard Leadership Principle (LP) questions. The outcome is currently pending, leaving me uncertain about the result.
Full Experience
I commenced my Amazon interview journey with an Online Assessment on June 30th, followed by a request to fill the Hiring Interest Form. After a period of silence and multiple follow-ups with the APAC Amazon team, I finally received confirmation that my Round 1 would be scheduled.
My first round took place on August 13th, conducted by a Software Development Manager at Amazon Prime Video. I was asked two DSA questions and one Leadership Principle question. I felt I performed well on the DSA problems, though my LP answer could have been stronger.
Following this, there were further follow-ups with the recruiter and loop scheduler. Round 2 was eventually confirmed but went through five reschedulings and three interviewer changes before I finally had it on September 16th. The interviewer was an SDE-2 at Amazon Prime Video, and I immediately sensed a challenging tone.
This round consisted of two demanding DSA problems that I believed were uncommon for Amazon interviews, requiring significant optimization. For the first DSA problem, I walked through a brute-force approach, then a DP solution, and was continuously pushed for space optimization, eventually recalling and explaining the center expansion technique. For the second DSA problem, after an initial brute-force idea, I realized the optimal solution involved a priority queue with custom structs for efficient merging and counting, which was incredibly difficult to devise on the spot.
Additionally, I faced two challenging LP questions during this round, which I believe I answered satisfactorily. When I inquired about feedback at the end, the interviewer advised, “Let me be very clear — practice daily and be ahead of your time.”
As an ICPC Amritapuri regionalist, Master on Codeforces, and LeetCode Knight with over 1200 DSA problems solved, this opportunity meant a great deal to me after a ten-month search. I am currently awaiting the official outcome, and the challenging nature of the second round has left me quite worried about the final decision.
Interview Questions (6)
Given an origin city, a destination city, and a maximum number of stops K, find the cheapest price to travel from the origin to the destination.
Describe a situation where you had to learn something entirely new for a task or project. Explain your approach to learning it, the challenges you faced, and how you successfully integrated this new knowledge.
Given a string, find all its palindromic substrings. The interviewer specifically pushed for an optimal solution with O(N) space complexity, hinting towards techniques like center expansion.
Given N sorted vectors, find all elements whose frequency across all N vectors is greater than or equal to K. This problem requires an optimized approach for merging and counting.
Describe a time when you went above and beyond the requirements of your job or a specific task, leading to outcomes that exceeded expectations.
Recount a situation where you learned something new and successfully applied that knowledge or skill to benefit your team or a project.
Preparation Tips
My preparation involved extensive practice, stemming from a background as an ICPC Amritapuri regionalist and a Master on Codeforces. I am also a LeetCode Knight, having solved over 1200 DSA problems. This consistent effort built a strong foundation in data structures and algorithms.